


oh, you're everything to me

by spaceburgers



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, post-trk, set right after the end of trk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-26
Updated: 2016-04-26
Packaged: 2018-06-04 15:25:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6664090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceburgers/pseuds/spaceburgers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam drives back to the Barns.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oh, you're everything to me

**Author's Note:**

> i finished reading all of trk in like three hours and i am in TEARS so i decided to write this because FEELINGS oh god
> 
> obviously, trk spoilers (nothing super major though, mostly just the epilogue) so turn away now if you haven't read it yet

Adam drives back to the Barns.

Ronan isn’t in the living room, or the bedroom, or in any of the other smaller sheds that cover the rest of the estate. When Adam finds him he’s asleep on the roof, Chainsaw perched serenely on his shoulder. He looks loose and relaxed; only recently has Ronan stopped looking like dreaming is physically painful for him. Adam sits down next to Ronan, as quietly as he can. He watches Ronan’s even breathing, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the smoothness of his features. He reaches out, touches the pads of his fingers to the space between Ronan’s brows. Calm. Peaceful.

Happy.

He lets his fingers trail upwards to Ronan’s scalp, where his hair is starting to grow back. He hasn’t shaved in a while, and there’s a short layer of dark fuzz covering the top of his head now. Adam runs his fingers over it absentmindedly. He gazes out across the Barns, where some of Ronan’s dream animals are slowly making their way across the fields. It’s an almost perfect day; the blue of the sky is almost shocking, like a photograph with its saturation pumped all the way up. He wonders what Gansey and Blue are doing now, wonders if Henry Cheng’s still with them.

And then Ronan wakes up. Slowly, in increments, but he hasn’t brought anything back with him this time. He shifts, turns to look at Adam, permits the gentle hand in his hair.

“Hey,” he says. His voice is soft. He’s not smiling, not really, more of just a careless tilt to the corner of his lips. It still makes something within Adam swell with emotion, at once overwhelming and calming.

“I got you something,” Adam says. He drops Ronan’s graduation certificate on his chest, still rolled up and tied together with an elegant red ribbon. Ronan looks at it, eyebrows furrowed for a moment before he realizes what it is. He snorts.

“Burn it,” he says.

“You know, someone in the administrative office actually had to print that out, roll it up, and then tie it together,” Adam says.

“You know,” Ronan says, “I don’t really care.”

Just a few months ago, Ronan’s attitude would’ve driven Adam up the wall. Just a few months ago, Adam would’ve had to bite back whatever he wanted to say—about responsibility, duty, about taking things for granted and throwing away perfectly good opportunities.

Now, he has his hand against the top of Ronan’s head, rubbing in slow circles, while Ronan stretches out on the roof of the Barns like a lazy, contented cat.

He says, “I went back to the trailer park.”

That gets Ronan’s attention. He shifts, finally sitting up, his shoulder pressed against Adam’s.

“You didn’t tell me,” he says. It’s not accusing at all, and Adam discovers he hadn’t been expecting Ronan to be at all.

Fear, he thinks, is something he’s finally left behind.

“It was a spur of the moment decision.”

Ronan falls quiet. He turns, gazes out onto the Barns. Adam had asked, once, what Ronan is thinking every time he looks at this strange and beautiful place, the wide rolling hills and the blue, blue sky with all its madness and impossibilities, this inexplicable kingdom ruled by dreamers.

Ronan had looked at him and said, _home_.

Finally he asks, “How did it go?”

Adam ponders this. He thinks of Robert Parrish’s face, ugly and coarse. He thinks of his mother’s tentative smile, the way her hands had shook, so minutely that Adam wouldn’t have been able to tell if he wasn’t so well acquainted with the experience himself.

“About as well as you’d expect,” he says, finally. Ronan knocks his shoulder against Adam’s, and it speaks volumes where words fall short.

“Fuck him,” Ronan says. Adam looks at him, grins.

“Really? While your boyfriend’s right in front of you?”

Ronan turns to Adam, opens his mouth, shuts it again. There’s not a lot that can physically put Ronan at a loss for words. Adam has been relishing the newfound realization that he just so happens to be one of them.

“We haven’t actually talked about this,” Ronan mutters, and it’s—it’s special, because it’s Ronan, who is at least ninety percent bravado on a good day, who regularly coats his words with forced casualness and faked disinterest. Ronan, who is now looking at him completely unguarded, staring openly, so different from the way he used to look at Adam, as if he couldn’t risk Adam looking back at him.

Adam takes Ronan’s hand. Ronan stares at their joined hands, where his pale ones are pressed against Adam’s calloused fingers, palm to palm.

Ronan has a _thing_ for Adam’s hands, he’s discovered.

“Are you going to call me your _baby_?” Adam says, completely seriously, slathering on his accent as thick and slow as he can. And that’s another thing that he’s learnt—to not care about what Ronan thinks of him. It seems like a moot point by now, honestly, after everything they’ve been through, after he’s been to hell and back and the only thing Ronan had to say to him afterwards was beautiful Latin poetry. “Your _sugar plum_? Your _honey bun_? Your—”

“Oh my fucking god, stop,” Ronan interrupts, but he’s laughing, shoving at Adam playfully, and Adam’s laughing too, free and easy, something he didn’t even know existed unspooling in his gut like honey.

“But _sweetie pie_ —”

Before he knows it Ronan’s tackled him, pushing him onto his back, the both of them laughing, and then suddenly Adam is hyperaware of everything—the points of contact where Ronan has his wrists pinned to the roof, the overhead afternoon sunlight casting Ronan’s face in shadow, the crooked smile on Ronan’s face, the way he has one knee shoved between Adam’s legs, the scent of meadow and spring, Chainsaw’s cawing as she circles the air above them, and Ronan, Ronan, _Ronan_.

Ronan is suddenly sober and unsmiling. This moment—this exact moment—suddenly feels heavy and precious, like something Adam wants to cradle in his arms, to hold and protect to keep it from shattering.

“You asshole,” Ronan says, but there’s no bite to his words.

Adam frees one of his hands, brings it to cradle the side of Ronan’s face, presses their lips together.

Somewhere, Blue and Gansey are off on a scavenger hunt for Blue’s graduation gift. Somewhere, Maura and Calla and Orla and the women of 300 Fox Way are going about their day, all that noise and bustle and cacophony under a single roof. Somewhere, Declan and Matthew are safe, trying to start anew without the shadow of Niall Lynch's legacy. Somewhere soon, he’ll be off to college, ivy-covered walls and brand-new textbooks and an overwhelming sense of purpose. Someday, he’ll be back here, he knows, Henrietta with its dusty streets and old corner shops and spray painted signs.

Someday, someday.

For now, though, he has this: warm sun, warm roof, this warm and beautiful boy smiling against his mouth.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
